Tim Brewster’s second recruiting class with the Gophers football program, in 2008, was ranked among the 20 best in the nation.

Jerry Kill’s second class might be lucky to rank in the top 10 of the Big Ten after National Signing Day today.

But that’s not the point.

By owning the state of Minnesota the way Brewster never did, by essentially combining his Mid-American Conference approach and the Iowa-Wisconsin model, Kill has earned the praise of recruiting experts and helped set a tone for his rebuilding Gophers football program.

Randy Taylor, director of recruiting for the National College Scouting Association, worked as Brewster’s director of football at Minnesota in 2007. Taylor said Wisconsin and Iowa never have top-rated classes like Ohio State and Michigan, but “they just win games” because they lock down their state’s best players and also take a lot of under-the-radar players and coach them up with a stable staff and system.

“There are the media darlings, the star coaches and well-known guys,” Taylor said. “And there’s what I kind of call the ‘Mid-American effect.’ They’re really good ball coaches who can get players to play in their system at a high level. I think Glen Mason was one of them. Jerry Kill is one of them.”

Brewster’s staff and system were far from stable.

He tried for a quick fix with a 2008 recruiting class that featured seven four-star players. But that class had 11 players who either couldn’t enroll for academic reasons or eventually left the team. The crown jewel of the class, Gophers starting quarterback MarQueis Gray, had to retake his ACT before returning to the team the following season.

“(Brewster) got high-end guys, but a lot of them didn’t stay or didn’t perform like we thought they would,” CBS Sports Network recruiting expert Tom Lemming said. “What I think Kill has done better in is in-state recruiting. He (basically) got everybody he wanted.”

Kill is expected to sign seven of the state’s top 10 players today, including Mankato West quarterback Philip Nelson, Hopkins wide receiver Andre McDonald, Blue Earth offensive tackle Jonah Pirsig and St. Thomas Academy offensive lineman Isaac Hayes. Brewster’s best in-state recruiting year was getting six of the top 10 players in 2009.

Kill didn’t have BCS-level coaching experience before coming to Minnesota, so he mostly steered clear of four-star and five-star out-of-state prospects. That’s also the philosophy he used at Northern Illinois and a few lower-level programs before that.

And he won with those players, a stable staff and system.

The bulk of Kill’s recruiting class is made up of prospects whose other scholarship offers were mostly from non-BCS schools.

“You can win with those guys,” Taylor said. “But then you have to get a marquee player at some point. You’ve got to get a game-changer. You can’t just nickel and dime everybody to death. You need some big-time players.”

Lemming rates Nelson, who is now enrolled at Minnesota, as the 40th-best player in the nation and the second-best pro-style quarterback in the class behind Notre Dame recruit Gunner Kiel. But Rivals.com and Scout.com rate Nelson as a three-star prospect.

Scout.com gives the 6-foot-9 Pirsig three stars but ranks him as the Gophers’ top recruit. ESPN.com has Hayes as a top-150 talent and Kill’s top recruit while also listing McDonald and Mallard Creek (N.C.) wide receiver Jamel Harbison as four-star recruits.

So clearly there’s no consensus on the players’ rankings, just like there’s a range of where Kill’s class ranks in the Big Ten. Rivals.com and Scout.com had Minnesota ranked 11th in the conference as of Tuesday; Taylor and Lemming both had the Gophers around sixth or seventh.

ESPN.com hasn’t ranked the Big Ten’s team recruiting classes, but its recruiting coordinator, Craig Haubert, said of all the teams in the Big Ten, Minnesota “really surprised me.”

“That being said, they’re going to probably still finish in the lower half,” Haubert said. “But if you look at their class, they’ve done a very good job, and they’re on the heels of some of the teams right in front of them. The only difference with their class and some of the Michigan State’s and Wisconsin’s and Iowa’s, when you get to the meat of the class, Minnesota drops off a little bit. But at the top of their class, they’ve done a great job.”

ESPN senior recruiting analyst Tom Luginbill was impressed with how the Gophers recruited considering Kill’s health issues and the fact that Minnesota finished 3-9 in 2011.

“I would say their top five to seven guys would probably exceed expectations from what they’d normally be able to draw,” Luginbill said. “It’s a very big and deep class. So I think they’re a surprise that’s fallen under the radar to some degree.”

The only two highly regarded in-state players Kill missed out on were Eden Prairie offensive tackle Nick Davidson (Stanford) and Osseo tight end Will Johnson (West Virginia).

Davidson, the son of Vikings offensive line coach Jeff Davidson, isn’t from Minnesota, having moved from North Carolina. Johnson had Minnesota as his second choice, but Kill already had received a commitment from another player at his position.

“They don’t have a big-name national recruit,” Rivals.com recruiting expert Josh Helmholdt said of Kill’s class. “Those guys help with the rankings. But this is a deep class, obviously. It’s got a lot of depth to it and it has addressed a lot of needs. On a number of levels, it’s a very solid class for coach Kill.”

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